• Home
  • News
  • Top Picks
    • Movies & Films: Top 25
    • Documentaries: Top 25
    • Films For Students: Top 10
    • Music Videos: Top 10
  • Categories
    • Film
    • Documentary
    • Shorts
    • Blog
    • Calendar
    • Links
    • About

Miss Liberty's Film & Documentary World

Libertarian Movies, Films & Documentaries

The Berlin Wall: Eight Films To Honor the Dead

The infamous Berlin Wall was socialism itself: concrete and razor wire in the name of humanity, guard towers and machine guns in the name of human progress. It’s ostensible purpose was to protect vulnerable East Germans from invasion, but as a practical matter it was simply a way of preventing the slave populations of the USSR from escaping to the West.

By the time it finally fell on November 9th, 1989, 5,000 had attempted to cross it, most ending up in brutal labor camps and about 200 killed on the spot. And yet, so unhappy was life behind the Iron Curtain, that young people in particular never stopped trying to breach it. The following films remember the Wall and its victims.


The first victim of the Berlin Wall was 18-year-old Peter Fechter.

The moment he was shot down by East German border guards as he tried to cross the barrier to the West, the Berlin Wall quite suddenly became real because everyone near the wall saw him die. In a poignant record of the tragedy, British Pathe provided this unnarrated, silent 3-minute clip.

“Peter Fechter (14 January 1944 – 17 August 1962) was a German bricklayer from Berlin in what became East Germany in 1945.” –Wikipedia

 


Despite the risk, many made heroic escapes, particularly in the beginning when the Wall was not fully completed, as captured in this early news reel.


Inspired by these heroic escapes, a young George Lucas, later of Star Wars fame, would make one of his earliest short films, Freiheit.


A number of tunnels were attempted, some successful. Several films were made on the subject, including Berlin Tunnel 21 starring Richard Thomas, and the German film Der Tunnel.


One of the most daring escapes, in which a family used a hot air balloon to get out, was made into an excellent film by Disney, Night Crossing.

This was remade in 2020, with the release of the German film Balloon.


The human cost of the Berlin Wall was not only human life as such, but human misery on a scale unimaginable. It separated loved ones quite suddenly, and for decades. That cost is well captured in The Promise, a film about a young couple in love. It begins with their attempted escape to the West. The man slips, hesitates, and before he knows it the moment is lost. His girlfriend goes on and makes it to the West, but he is left behind. It isn’t clear why he hesitated. Was it fear of being caught? We and he don’t know. But his failure fills him with guilt, compounded by his subsequent draft into the border guard service. Each further opportunity for him to escape is lost by bad luck and his own lack of daring. And as time goes by, he makes one compromise after another to survive until finally he is doing whatever the state wants him to do just to have the slight crumbs of happiness they allow him.


Then one day a speech that almost didn’t happen changed everything. Speechwriter Peter Robinson was told by US diplomats to write a speech for President Reagan’s visit to the Berlin Wall, but was warned against any “commie bashing.” He didn’t take their advice, and Reagan loved what he wrote. “Tear Down This Wall” became an iconic moment of the Cold War.


Enough time has apparently passed that Germans can now laugh about the Wall, in a sort of bittersweet way. The German-made comedy Good Bye Lenin! captures, in its own ironic way, the fall of communism far better than any straightforward telling. At one level, it’s a delightful farce that relentlessly mocks East Germany’s socialist past, but at another it also touches on the emotional perspective of many former East Germans, that in the transition to freedom…their side, the side they had been taught to love, lost.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Featured Post

weird

Things Are Weird. Is It Time To Watch Wild Palms?

For years, the most outrageous conspiracy theory that had any popularity was the claim that a corrupt cabal of pedophiles and pervs were somehow calling the shots behind the scenes, protected by governments. This was considered tin-hat stuff. Then the world learned that there actually was a pedophile island … Continue Reading

obsolete industries

All Obsolete Industries Deserve A Bailout

This hilarious video put out by The Coalition for Obsolete Industries takes a (tongue in cheek) stand against progress in order to save jobs. You can learn more about the coalition on their Facebook page. … Continue Reading

the stranger

The Stranger (1946)

A post-WWII war crimes official hunts down a little-known escaped Nazi: the man who secretly planned and managed the Holocaust. [ The Stranger credits: Dir: Orson Welles/ Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young/ 95 min/ Drama, Thriller/ Democide] “I will not spoil this tightly-crafted cat and … Continue Reading

Themes

Abuse of power American revolution Anti-draft Anti-regulation Anti-slavery Anti-socialism Anti-taxation Anti-war Ayn Rand Corrupt government Creator as hero Democide Econ 101 Eminent domain Equality & law Escape from socialism Freedom of speech Free press as hero Government as bigot Government as torturer Government enforced morality Government healthcare Government schools Incompetent government Individualism John Stossel Law & liberty Legalize Drugs Libertarian heroes Libertarianism 101 Power corrupts Power worship Pro-capitalism Pro-immigration Propaganda Psychiatric coercion Resistance to tyranny Right to secede Search & seizure Second amendment Sexual liberty Social tolerance Unions & monopolies Voluntarism Working for government

Genres/Categories

Action-Adventure Animated Biography Blog Comedy Documentary Drama Family Featured Film Foreign History Horror Music-Dance Netflix News Romance SciFi-Fantasy Shorts Thriller Upcoming Western

About Miss Liberty

This site is a collection of films and documentaries of particular interest to libertarians (and those interested in libertarianism). It began as a book, Miss Liberty’s Guide to Film: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium, where many of the recommended films were first reviewed. The current collection has grown to now more than double the number in that original list, and it’s growing still.

  • RSS

© 2023 Miss Liberty's Film & Documentary World. All Rights Reserved

 

Loading Comments...